My first real day
Today was my
first proper day of working as a fundraiser for the new mad company. Last week I was ill for 4 days and when I did
go in I was sent home for not knowing the script.
Yeah, I had
done fundraising before for the last company but I don’t really count that time. I never really got my feet on the ground with
that job. I count my experience with the
last company as an “introduction to fundraising” and this time was my first
proper experience in fundraising. So I
have written off last week, and today is the start of a new week.
I was working
in a suburb called Burwood. The best way
of getting to these suburbs is by train since I live just across the road from
the main train station. I always plan my
journeys online the night before so I get there on time. However the internet was not working so I
didn’t know how long it would take to get to Burwood, so I just played it safe and
jumped onto an early train at around 8:30 giving me around 90 minutes to get to
Burwood.
This was
great because Burwood turned out to be less than 20 minutes away! I had over an hour to kill at the train
station. This gave me time to go through
my script again but it just wasn’t going in.
I just don’t feel like I can cram anymore into my head. If I memorise one section of the script I just
push another section out of my head.
When the time
started approaching 10 o’clock I headed to the ticket barrier to meet up with
my team. This is one of the interesting
parts of this job because the only information you are given about your team
members are their names, and today I was working with Joy and Will with Joy
being the team leader.
It is really
interesting waiting in a public place looking at everyone and thinking “is that
joy?”
The time was
now almost 10 and a train had arrived at the station. I knew that a crowd of people were just about
to come round the corner and I assumed Joy would be among them. I started playing a game where I would think
to myself “the next person who comes round the corner is Joy” ...then some old
man comes round the corner, I don’t think that is Joy.
Again, I
think “the next person is going to be Joy!” and then some fat old woman comes
round the corner... “No, that is
probably not Joy either, I hope not anyway...”
“Alright, the
next person is Joy”, then some little Indonesian looking girl comes round the
corner. “No, that is not her... wait,
why is she walking towards me waving?”
It was Joy.
Will was the
other member of our team and he quickly appeared out from the crowd. After brief introductions we headed to our
spot to start working.
Chipping away
We arrived at
the place where we were going to fundraise and shooed off a group of fundraiser
who were already in our spot. We managed
to shoo off the other fundraisers by playing the ultimate trump card, we had a
permit to work in this area and they didn’t.
After they
packed up and cleared off we started to get ready and to be honest I was not
feeling confident at all. I had to go
through my script with Joy and I really didn’t do that well. I knew I was on the border line of being sent
home again for not knowing my script, probably for the last time but she let me
stay and practice. After 20 minutes of frantically
going through the script she threw me a t-shirt and told me to start
working. It was hard, I was keen but
nervous.
After a
difficult morning we headed to lunch, my confidence was a bit low but I was
doing alright. I had 2 very negative
comments this morning. I was waving at
one guy and he said “you can put your hand down mate because I don’t give a
flying fuck”. A middle aged woman I
tried to stop turned around and said “I wish you guys would stop harassing
people!” in a rather angry voice.
Although they didn’t really bother me at the time I couldn’t get there
comments out of my head.
Was what they
said true? Was I just a nuisance on the
streets? Had I ruined these peoples day? I don't want to be that guy... I'm a nice guy, I don't want to ruin people's day. How am I going to get through the afternoon?
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